


Didn't Mean It

by Voodoohavk



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Drunken Lucifer, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-27
Updated: 2018-03-27
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voodoohavk/pseuds/Voodoohavk
Summary: A drunken rambling man who thinks he's the Devil was not what Chloe had prepared herself to deal with today. Though she found there was usually little she could do in way of preparation when Lucifer was around.





	Didn't Mean It

**Author's Note:**

> For [THIS](https://luciferprompts.tumblr.com/post/171445828788/prompt-lucifers-somehow-proximity-to-chloe) prompt from [Lucifer Prompts](https://luciferprompts.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Prompt was: Lucifer's (somehow, proximity to Chloe?) managed to get completely drunk and - as a role reversal with season 1 - all but throws himself at Chloe. How does she react? 
> 
> I took it a slightly different direction but here we are.
> 
> Also posted on [**tumblr**](https://ravenscaar.tumblr.com/post/171887195446/didnt-mean-it).

“Lucifer?” 

For a man who claimed to have ruled Hell less than a decade ago, Lucifer seemed to have a personal vendetta against locks. After almost three years, Chloe had gotten used to taking the chance when her partner wouldn’t answer his phone and braving the elevator doors. She had asked once why the elevator had to open directly into his version of a living room, why he couldn’t have a hall, or God forbid a door she could knock on?

It had taken a minute to get him back on track because she had said the ‘G-word’ and gotten a lecture about how his father _‘couldn’t forbid me from doing anything, Detective’_ , but he had eventually gotten around to claiming he had nothing to hide, and there was nothing he took part in that she wasn’t more than welcome in.

That last part was said with a smirk and a wink to cover up the elephant in the room that they both knew existed. There was so much of Lucifer’s life she was absolutely not privy to, and she tried to pretend that didn’t bother her.

However, other than passing more than one scantily clad individual on their way out, Chloe had yet to be truly traumatized by anything beyond the elevator doors. The same could not be said for Dan, but Chloe felt it difficult to muster up an sympathy for him. 

Still, the ride to the penthouse was always a tense one when Lucifer wasn’t answering his phone. She never knew what she might find when the doors opened. Was he gone again? Was he hurt? Was he with someone? 

The answer to all three of her most pressing questions very quickly turned out to be no. At least not in the most literal sense.

“Detective!” Lucifer spun on the bar stool he was currently occupying, just barely managing to not slosh the glass of brown liquid he gripped in his hand as he gestured wildly with it. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

He was wearing the same suit she had seen him in that morning, or at least most of it. His vest and dark slacks were still in tact, but he had undone the top buttons of his ridiculous plum colored shirt, and his tie was slightly askew. He seemed to have lost his jacket somewhere along the way, and there was a tuft of his dark hair uncharacteristically fluffed out of place. There was a patch of something wet staining his shirt, running along the length of his collarbone and making the fabric almost transparent as it clung to his skin. Had he spilled something or was it sweat? Did Lucifer sweat? Of course he did that was a ridiculous question.

“You, uh…I mean, you weren’t answering your phone.”

“Is that all it takes to get you in my penthouse, Detective?” His grin was somewhat closer to a leer than a smile. “Maybe I should ignore your calls more often then, hm?”

Chloe might have rolled her eyes, had she not been so surprised by the scene in front of her. As it was, she was a bit distracted. Standing at the edge of the bar she crossed her arms.

“Are you drunk?”

“Psh,” Lucifer pulled a ridiculously undignified face that had a grin splitting across her own, and waved with his free hand as he moved to his feet. There was none of his usual grace, and for the first time in a while, Chloe was struck by how lanky he was. Not tall or imposing, just lanky. Like a colt with limbs longer than its body. She wondered what he must have looked like a teenager, all height and no girth to fill it out.

When Lucifer set the glass back down on the counter, a few drops did manage to escape onto the granite, but he didn’t seem to notice. He slumped down, back hunched over as he leaned on his elbows alongside her. She couldn’t help the breath of a laugh that left her as his shoulder brushed hers.

“Is that all you have to say? Psh?”

He laughed with his whole body, head tossed back and mouth open wide. His tie somehow became even looser with the motion. Her fingers itched, though she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to tighten it back up again, or help him take it off.

Both impulses were ridiculous, so she flexed her fingers against her arms like she could shake the feeling just from the motion.

Lucifer leaned in suddenly, close enough that she could smell the scotch on his breath, and feel the heat of it across her cheek. She leaned back.

“I may have had a bottle…or three.” He snickered. “Or…ten?” He glanced down the bar, one eyebrow quirked like he was trying to remember.

Her own eyebrows raised as she followed his line of sight along the wall of alcohol, looking for proof that he really had more than one bottle of hard liquor before she had arrived. She could only see one empty bottle, something ornate and Scottish sounding sitting at the end of the counter, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t really had three.

The rules of what should and should not kill someone didn’t always seem to apply to Lucifer anyway.

Still, ten bottles wasn’t humanly possible, no matter how super-human he might have seemed at times.

“Three bottles?” She challenged instead, leaning down on her elbows alongside him, mirroring his pose. “Any special occasion?” 

It seemed it was the wrong question to ask, and she felt something like guilt prick at her chest as he deflated suddenly and without any warning. “Well…” He might have shrugged or he may have leaned too far one way, but suddenly he wasn’t brushing against her he was leaning against her, and she leaned into him.

It was only to keep him from toppling over.

Of course.

“I wouldn’t call it an occasion,” he clarified, “and it definitely isn’t anything special.” It was the exact sort of nebulous non-answer that she had come to expect from him.

Somehow, time had only made that sort of response a more difficult pill to swallow.

Lucifer lifted the glass in his hands again, draining half of it in one go as he turned his back to her and made his way back through his apartment. She watched from her spot along the bar as he trailed the tips of his fingers along the edge of the piano as he passed, not sparing it a glance or slowing down in his journey to the couch. She wondered if he had even realized he had done it, or if it was an unconscious gesture, one he did a million times just because it was where his hands wanted to be.

A smile that was far too fond for her own good was fighting its way onto her face. Given her partner’s current level of inebriation, she thought she might have been safe in allowing it to stay for the time being.

Chloe waited for him to flop himself down on the couch, sprawled out in the kind of dramatic flair that she would have expected of a Romantics poet, before she made to follow him.

His eyes were closed, and there was a pained crease running along his brow. As she sunk down in the cushion next to him, he opened one eye to look at her.

Three bottles or thirteen, it appeared he was more drunk than he had originally let on, if the openness of his facial expressions was any indicator, or the careless way he tossed about his limbs. Both of those could also have just been Lucifer being himself, it was difficult to tell.

After a few seconds he sighed, world weary and full of drama and Chloe had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. He sat up right again, shifting his leg so she would have more room. He blinked at her, his focus unsteady and hand swaying ever so slightly with the glass back and forth like he was having trouble holding any part of himself upright.

“You should drink some water,” she told him at the exact same moment that he opened his own mouth and told her something.

She almost hadn’t heard him, his voice lower than usual and spoken in a soft tone that she wouldn’t have thought him capable of. The words didn’t match the almost vacant expression on his face, like he hadn’t maybe meant to say them, or hadn’t even realized he had thought of them at all. None of that mattered however, as her heart kicked up a beat, slamming hard against his chest in shock and making the room tilt sideways until she felt like she was on just as unsteady ground as he was.

She had heard wrong.

It was the only possible explanation and she needed to get her breathing back under control as a hot sort of a panic raced down her limbs. Her fingers itched again but this time she didn’t even know what they wanted, let alone how to stop them.

“What did you say?”

“How did he do it?” Lucifer asked instead, ignoring her question like she hadn’t even spoken. He took another sip of his scotch but his eyes never left hers. “I know he’s all knowing but even after fucking millennia I have no idea how.” He tapped his fingers along the glass, and then quite abruptly threw back the rest of the liquid inside without so much as a flinch. He slammed the glass down on the table and was up again, pacing around the room as Chloe gripped the back of the couch with increasingly white knuckles.

Lucifer had his hands in his hair, tugging at strands until a few managed to come free of whatever gel was holding them in place. Some stuck up and others began to curl back into their natural state. “Eons,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. “Eons, of walking this earth on and off and doing whatever and whomever I pleased, and he has the audacity to think he can still control me?”

Lucifer’s hands came down on the back of the couch, nearly touching hers as he hunched over, eyes wide and wild as they searched her face. He wasn’t making any sense, and yet he was looking at her like she might be able to explain his own drunken ramblings to him, like not only did she understand what he was going on about, but would be able to clear up a few things for him as well.

“I-“ Chloe tried to fight through the screaming match her brain and her heart were currently engaged in, trying to find some sense of logic to his words and the non-sequitur into which he had decided to launch.

Lucifer’s hand found hers, though he didn’t try to move it or lace their finger together, only laid it on top, long fingers dragging along her skin. He was leaning over the back of the couch now, close enough that she could smell the alcohol on him, almost strong enough to overpower his natural scent. Something like aftershave and fire and something else that had never been anything except Lucifer.

His eyes were wide and intense, but there was no danger in them, only an unadulterated fear, the likes of which she never seen in him before and never wanted to see again.

She stealed herself, taking a deep breath in before she rested her other hand on top of his, sandwiching it between her fingers. “You’re drunk, Lucifer,” she told him quietly. “You need some water and to go to sleep.”

As abruptly as he had stood, he pulled his hand away from hers, sliding himself easily around the side of the couch until he dropped down next to it, leaning his back hard against the cushions. Had she not been certain he was in the middle of a drunken breakdown, it might have been sweet, the way he leaned his shoulder against her thigh. He was too tall to be on the floor, his legs too long and one was cramped against the coffee table.

He looked at her and she told herself he didn’t mean it, that he was drunk.

“You know what the worst part is?”

“Hm?” She hummed on instinct, the sound too high for her own ears. She still had no idea what he was talking about and was feeling increasingly like she was supposed to. He made no sense on a good day, but this was entering a new territory of the bizarre.

He leaned closer and she could feel the heat of his skin through her jeans when he pressed his cheek against them. “It bloody worked.” He stared up at her, that same pleading expression, begging her to understand and to make sense of it all. When he spoke again his voice was soft. “Because I would do anything for you, Chloe.”

Her chest felt like it was constricting, like there wasn’t enough oxygen or alcohol in the room to assist her with the feeling those words gave her. It was too late and the day had been too long, and there were a million other reasons she couldn’t handle this right now.

“Anything,” Lucifer repeated before she could find her tongue to tell him to stop. He was on his knees then, kneeling beside her next to the couch, one hand gripping her thigh in a burning grasp. Him on his knees put him almost at eye level with herself on the couch, and she tried not to think too hard about that.

Thinking too hard about any of it was going to get her in trouble.

“I’ve died for you Chloe,” he told her, a rising mania in his voice. The hand not currently holding her leg ran through his hair again as he glanced off into the room, away from her as his eyes searched for something she couldn’t see. “And I’d do it again. For a mortal.” He looked back at her, letting his hand drop. “For you.”

“You would do anything?” She finally asked, running almost on autopilot at this point, forcing herself to focus on the bigger issue at hand. Lucifer wasn’t a rambling and dangerous mad man, he was her friend. Her best friend. Her very odd friend who did and said very odd things and currently needed her help.

He nodded, both hands now gripping her legs as he leaned closer. For one panicked moment she thought he was going to try to kiss her, but he stopped short of that, just staring at her with those same fearful and pleading eyes. “Anything.”

She still had no idea what Lucifer’s real past looked like, beyond the wild metaphors and strange situations he seemed to wind up in on some unseen Father’s behalf. Whatever had happened though, she just wished there was something she could do to sooth it over. To patch up those old wounds that tended to bleed out in to what sounded like madness to anyone not currently occupying Lucifer’s brain.

It sounded like a dangerous place to be on a good day, if she was honest.

“Okay, I need you to drink a glass of water, and go to bed, alright?”

Lucifer’s pained expression slipped for a second, faltering as confusion took over. “What?”

“You’re drunk, Lucifer.” How many times had she said that tonight? It felt like the only thing she was able to say. “You need to sleep it off.”

“No-“ He shook his head but she cut him off.

“Yes.” She rose to her feet, grabbing his wrists to coax him to do the same.

Though he went easily, he still shook his head again, and the expression on his face was one she was better equipt to deal with, annoyance. “No, you’re not understanding.”

“Yes I am, you care about me very much and you’ll do anything I say and so now you have to prove it and go the hell to sleep, Lucifer. If there’s anything else you need to say we can discuss it once you’re had a few cups of coffee tomorrow.”

Lucifer opened his mouth, like he wanted to debate her more, but only a strangled sort of protest came out before he closed it again.

Finally he nodded, letting go of her hands as he turned away from her. He somehow managed to remember the empty scotch glass on the counter, reaching down to swipe it up before making long if somewhat uneven strides back towards the bar. It was a victory in most senses of the word, but the look of pain that made its way back onto his face before he turned away from her made any sense of accomplishment deflate in her chest.

The next few minutes all melted together. Despite Lucifer’s meltdown he turned out to be perfectly capable of getting his own glass of water and of falling down face first into his mattress without any additional assistance from the detective. So all that was left for her to do was to hover nearby, pretending she would know what to do if he decided to go on another nonsensical tangent at her, or say anything else that would tighten that vice around her chest again.

With her partner safely sprawled across his own bed, she awkwardly leaned into the entryway of his bedroom. “Please don’t asphyxiate in your sleep.” 

Lucifer sighed, his voice muffled by the plush blanket he was refusing to remove his face from. “With you gone, I’m certain there’s no fear of that.“

“Right,” Chloe whispered to herself. It was by no means near the strangest thing he had said that night, and was very low on her list of things to sort out. She tapped the wall twice before turning her back. “Goodnight, Lucifer.”

“Goodnight, Detective.”

She made it to the elevator before her legs tried to give out on her, closing her eyes against the harsh glow of the lights as the doors closed and floor began to move.

She had never been one to let her nerves knock her off her feet, and she certainly wasn’t about to start in a penthouse elevator. Her hands shook along the golden railing as she tried to steady her breathing.

It was fine. Lucifer was just a very strange guy, dealing with something rough in his life. She would be there for him however he let her. He was her best friend. 

He didn’t mean it.

He was having a break down.

He didn’t mean it.

He didn’t mean it.

He didn’t mean it.

The elevator dinged and her eyes snapped open as she found herself on the ground floor. She fished her keys out of her pocket and repeated the same thing to herself over and over again, trying to drown out the sound of his quiet and pleading voice echoing inside her head. 

_“Chloe, I’m in love with you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on [**Tumblr.**](https://ravenscaar.tumblr.com/)


End file.
